Funeral prayer in absentia offered for crew members; Search for black box, missing crew continues
FATAL CRASH: A large congregation offers funeral prayers in absentia for Muhammad Arif Siddiqui, who died in a K2 Airways Boeing 737-400 cargo plane crash in the Arabian Sea. PHOTO: INP
KARACHI:
Although the wreckage of the ill-fated K2 Airways cargo plane has been recovered and brought to Karachi, hopes to piece together the cause of the crash are still up in the air, with rescuers yet to find the plane’s black box or recover the bodies of the crew.
According to sources, the recovered debris from the Boeing 737 cargo plane, which crashed in the Arabian Sea about 53 nautical miles off Ormara on Tuesday evening, has been moved from Balochistan to Karachi. But officials said the recovered wreckage is insufficient for investigators to determine the cause of the crash.
Salvage and rescue operations continued on Sunday despite the weekly holiday. Divers searched the waters around the suspected crash site, while air surveillance was also maintained, but no trace of the flight data recorder or crew had been found at the time of filing this report.
Meanwhile, funeral prayers were offered in absentia in Karachi for crew members believed to have lost their lives in the crash.
Ghaibana namaz-e-janaza of aircraft engineer Muhammad Arif Siddiqui was held at Gulistan-e-Jauhar, presided over by his son, Abdul Rafi. The prayers were attended by acting Jamaat-e-Islami Karachi chief Muslim Parvez, party officials, family members, relatives, neighbors and a large number of party workers.
Speaking to reporters after the prayers, Muslim Parvez said that every soul ultimately returns to its Creator. He said the residents of the area bore witness to Siddiqui’s good character and prayed that Allah grant him the highest place in the hereafter. He expressed concern over the failure to recover the crew’s bodies and the plane’s black box several days after the crash, saying the government’s efforts to search the sea had been inadequate. He described the plane’s sudden disappearance from radar as a great tragedy and called for a full, transparent and impartial investigation into the accident. He also called on the government to use all available resources to recover the bodies so that the bereaved families could find closure.
Separately, ghaibana namaz-e-janaza was offered by the aircraft’s captain, Captain Rizwan Idris, after Asr prayers at the Falcon Complex in Malir Cantonment on Sunday. A large number of relatives and residents attended the funeral prayers along with serving and retired Pakistan Air Force officers, including the Air Officer Commanding South, Base Commander Malir and members of the civil aviation community. Attendees also offered their condolences to the captain’s family, including his sons, who had arrived from Germany.
The funeral prayer in absentia for aircraft engineer Muhammad Arif Siddiqui was also attended by a large number of residents and Jamaat-e-Islami leaders, including Muslim Parvez, District East Chief Naeem Akhtar and Information Secretary Zahid Askari. The funeral prayer in absentia for the plane’s second engineer, Muhammad Hamid, is scheduled to be held after Maghrib prayers on Monday at the Rim Jhim Tower in Safora.
